Mental Imagery Induces Cross-Modal Sensory Plasticity and Changes Future Auditory Perception
通过六项实验（每项24名参与者）发现，想象视觉刺激能像真实看到一样引发听觉定位的频段特异性后效，表明心理意象可重新校准感官并诱导跨模态可塑性。
Can what we imagine in our minds change how we perceive the world in the future? A continuous process of multisensory integration and recalibration is responsible for maintaining a correspondence between the senses (e.g., vision, touch, audition) and, ultimately, a stable and coherent perception of our environment. This process depends on the plasticity of our sensory systems. The so-called ventriloquism aftereffect-a shift in the perceived localization of sounds presented alone after repeated exposure to spatially mismatched auditory and visual stimuli-is a clear example of this type of plasticity in the audiovisual domain. In a series of six studies with 24 participants each, we investigated an imagery-induced ventriloquism aftereffect in which imagining a visual stimulus elicits the same frequency-specific auditory aftereffect as actually seeing one. These results demonstrate that mental imagery can recalibrate the senses and induce the same cross-modal sensory plasticity as real sensory stimuli.